Share Out: Circulation Challenge

In the last year, I have been purposefully building up the children’s programs to best accommodate the community and to increase the offerings of quality programs. The best thing I did for this was to hire an amazing children’s librarian. Our programs are popular, our numbers for programs are great, the caregivers and kids are really enjoying everything. The only thing I keep noticing is that we are not circulating a lot of books after programs.

It’s a bit of a puzzlement. It’s especially interesting because we have been buying tons of new books and weeding all the odd, outdated, and uninteresting children’s books (for example: The FedEx business plan made into a picture book: why?), and I want all of this to translate into circs.

Reading through ALSC posts, there are a lot of good ideas: Booktalking to the schools, Book Bundles for preschoolers, mapping pathways to increase services, the art of merchandising, thinking about location, etc. There are lots of possibilities here. Other things I have seen people try: Lego build contest, where you get to add a Lego piece to a tower creation at the desk when you check out, or challenge patrons to check out a particular type of book like a new book or a dinosaur book for DINOvember and then they get a sticker or trinket for doing so, and adding book displays to all programs.

What other great ideas can you share? We get so many people at our programs, so help me figure out how to translate that to an increased circulation. I can identify some of our problems: we are in a wealthier area and I think a lot of our patrons buy their own books, many of our kids come in with grandparents or caregivers who may not know the library card status, and we have had a very dated collection for years.

I’ll report on what we try in a later post, so we can all share the good ideas.

The post Share Out: Circulation Challenge appeared first on ALSC Blog.

 In the last year, I have been purposefully building up the children’s programs to best accommodate the community and to increase the offerings of quality programs. The best thing I did for this was to hire an amazing children’s librarian. Our programs are popular, our numbers for programs are great, the caregivers and kids are really enjoying everything. The only thing I keep noticing is that we are not circulating a lot of books after programs. It’s a bit of a puzzlement. It’s especially interesting because we have been buying tons of new books and weeding all the odd, outdated, and uninteresting children’s books (for example: The FedEx business plan made into a picture book: why?), and I want all of this to translate into circs. Reading through ALSC posts, there are a lot of good ideas: Booktalking to the schools, Book Bundles for preschoolers, mapping pathways to increase services,…
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